After the crowd stood for the national anthem, it felt free to hoot — and sometimes groan when camera shots swiveled too fast and made you feel as if one of your eyes wasn't in sync with the other.

Based on 3-D testing, Fox avoided overhead shots that showed much of the field, in part because the 3-D effect is lost the farther the cameras are from the action. But game coverage that relied heavily on close-ups at times left you wondering what was happening on the field.

Fox announcer Kenny Albert, part of Fox's production crew devoted solely to its 3-D coverage — around the USA, prices ranged from $18-$20 — played up the novelty. He noted a snap "was high even in 3-D" and asked "does it hurt more in 3-D?"

For viewers, it sometimes did.

On-screen graphics were sometimes a bit jarring with the on-field action. Quick camera movements, which Fox had planned to avoid, were dizzying. But Fox, which planned to focus on tight shots for 3-D, made viewers feel they were on the sidelines or even on the field.

Said Reggie Thompson, a viewer from Lorton, Va., "forget about how they do it — it's jacked up. But it works better if you're glasses are upside-down."

Others in the audience echoed that opinion.

Barkley the entertainer usually gets a pass

Charles Barkley's latest and very serious mistake — an arrest for a drunken driving charge — has drawn derision appropriate for an athlete or credible analyst. CBSsports.com said if he were "almost any other athlete we'd have burned him at the stake by now" and The Charlotte Observer said he's "hurt his credibility."

Except, TNT's Barkley is neither an athlete, representing a team or league, nor particularly credible. He's an entertainer— think Lindsay Lohan, Hugh Grant, Paris Hilton, the Saturday Night Live news desk — who began in sports. His supposed plan to run for governor of Alabama would be as meaningful as Howard Stern's run for New York governor in 1994.

Otherwise, Barkley wouldn't have survived on-air after saying Dan Rather should have killed Saddam Hussein when he interviewed him. And that Olympic curling "is dusting, any woman can do that." Or goading animal rights activists by eating a burger on-air — "I don't care what this cow went through." Or saying, after a Desperate Housewives actress jumped into Terrell Owens' arms on a Monday NightFootball skit, he'd like the actress "to jump on me in here one night." By the time Barkley said The Masters has "always been racist" or, on CNN, that conservatives "are fake Christians," who really cared? After all, Barkley long ago said he's "not a role model" — but even that was just a scripted line in a (Nike) TV ad.

Like Don Rickles, Barkley is best seen as a long-running act where he can say things that would be wildly inappropriate for most public figures. But that act also allows Barkley to do things on-air like kiss a donkey's rear end.

The Houston Rockets' Tracy McGrady, talking on TNT, has figured it out: "I don't really listen to Charles about basketball. I listen to Charles if he's talking about calories in a cupcake."

MLB Network to announce Hall inductees

If you have enough TV channels, everything can become a TV show.

MLB Network will formally announce today that it will air a live show Monday for the Baseball Hall of Fame selections.

The Hall, which previously announced its inductees online, will make the announcement from the MLB Network studio in Secaucus, N.J., at 1:30 p.m. ET in a show that will include Hall President Jeff Idelson as well as network analysts such as Barry Larkin and Harold Reynolds.

This is the latest example of a specialized league-owned channel creating TV competition for ESPN, like when the NFL Network began covering the NFL draft. And borrowing a page from ESPN's playbook, the MLB Network will devote hours of peripheral programming to the Hall announcement, starting with replays of playoff games Sunday and concluding with another live special at 9 p.m. ET Monday. That special is expected to include at least one of the new inductees.

'Superstars' back on ABC for summer fling

Bonanza, All in the Family and M*A*S*H, like dinosaurs, were hits and then disappeared. But TheSuperstars, which debuted in 1973 as, arguably, the first reality TV show, lives on — returning to ABC for six episodes this summer.

And, says Bob Horowitz, president of Juma Entertainment, which will help produce the show now dubbed simply Superstars, it won't try to remake itself for the 21st century: "We're bringing back the wall with the rope on the obstacle course. That's a signature of Superstars."

Don't laugh.

Olympic pole vaulter Bob Seagren won the first Superstars, a show created by TV executive Barry Frank and figure skating's Dick Button after they had debated which sports had the best athletes.

The show ran until 1994, then was resurrected for five years starting in 1998, says Horowitz, only because it bought its own TV time — but ABC will pay for this summer's shows. Track's Renaldo Nehemiah, soccer's Kyle Rote Jr. and football's Jason Sehorn are the show's three-time winners, but boxer Joe Frazier produced its most memorable moment in a swimming event — because, it turned out, he couldn't swim.

This summer's Superstars, which will include men and women, will pair eight athletes with eight entertainers. And, says Horowitz, don't expect anybody on this reality TV to have to eat spiders or start sobbing: "We had no clue if the networks we pitched would embrace it as entertainment, true reality TV, athletics. But ABC wants to maintain the basic integrity of the events.

Not names of bowls — team names. ESPN's highest-rated bowl was the Dec. 27 Champs Sports Bowl. Although the bowl last year had fairly well-known teams — Boston College and Michigan State — this season's matchup of Wisconsin and Florida State gave the bowl a 41% ratings boost over last year.

Fox suffered through the lowest BCS game rating ever with its Cincinnati-Virginia Tech Orange Bowl. But getting college football superstars Ohio State and Texas in the Fiesta more than compensated: The Fiesta's rating was up 35% over last year — and up 41% over the bowl game in the time slot last year.

But then, just being in a bowl can draw more attention to a matchup. Buffalo-Connecticut in the Jan. 3 International Bowl drew 2.1% of U.S. households with cable/satellite TV. That was up about 31% from the bowl's Rutgers-Ball State game last year. But that 2.1% rating is probably more than 100% higher than what a Buffalo-Connecticut game might have drawn in the regular season — without the halo effect of bowl status.

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